Most people, at some point, have surely wanted to host Top Gear. You get to go on amazing round-the-world adventures with your mates, set fire to things, be dismissive of other cultures, shout words like 'astonishing!' in a sort of Alan Partridge-y way quite a lot and, very occasionally, review a car that your viewers would be able to afford. But how would you go about becoming a Top Gear presenter? Here's the five-step guide...

Be convinced of the car's superiority over all other modes of transport

The key attribute required of a Top Gear presenter is unerring devotion to the idea of the car as history's most perfect vehicle. This devotion must be so irrational that, if anyone dares to suggest something is better than a car – perhaps a boat, or a train, or a BMX, or a bobsleigh, or a jet fighter – you must feel compelled to immediately challenge one to a race. If you win, it will count as an almighty victory for the automobile. If you lose, it's your job to be genuinely incredulous, even if you were racing a speedboat across the surface of a lake, or a funicular railway up a near-vertical cliff.

Have no concept of what a decent haircut looks like

Imagine turning up at the Top Gear auditions with a reasonably competent haircut. You'd be laughed out of town. It's the antithesis of what a Top Gear presenter should be. Take the existing hosts. Richard Hammond has a feathery monstrosity that doesn't know whether to be based on Rod Stewart or We Don't Need Another Hero-era Tina Turner. James May walks around with a concussed Irish wolfhound on his head. And Jeremy Clarkson increasingly resembles a snooker ball with a handful of pubes glued to it. You might not find a haircut worse than these, but you should be able to find one that's just as bad.

Say at least one deliberately objectionable thing a week

This is where Top Gear presenters earn their money. Any idiot can drive a car around or make a helicopter out of an old Nissan Sunny, but that's not what'll keep you in the papers. For that you need to deliberately choose a section of society and bully it in the bluntest, most boorish way imaginable. But be careful, because Top Gear has already picked on women, lorry drivers, homosexuals, Germans, Mexicans, Australians and Americans to name but a few, and you want to stay fresh. Why not try turning to camera and saying: "The thing about New Zealanders is that they all, without exception, smell exactly like animal urine" or, "All cat owners definitely have herpes"? It's worth a shot.

Diversify

Obviously to be a Top Gear presenter you can't only be a Top Gear presenter. This is why Hammond has branched out and made all those vaguely science-y programmes that seem like they should belong on Channel 5 or Discovery Turbo. And Total Wipeout. It's why May has set out on an elaborate mission to make a separate documentary about every single toy he owned as a child. And it's why Clarkson brings out six books a year, each with him pulling an infinitesimally different disgruntled facial expression on the cover. Maybe you could present a show about spanners, or edit a magazine called Cuh! about aspects of modern life that disappoint you. So long as it's vaguely blokeish, the world is your oyster.

Be a man

This, sadly, appears unavoidable. Top Gear is a bloke's show, full of blokey banter and blokey features and blokes who look like they probably smell of stale booze and cigarettes, and all the hosts are blokes. Women could attempt to disguise themselves as a bloke in the Top Gear presenter mould to fit in – maybe by growing an unseemly paunch, wearing horrible jeans, adopting a bizarre new blokey intonation and starting every sentence with the word 'now' – but it's a long shot. Good luck.